The transmedia web series project raised interest from potential French partners during their residency in France they just completed last week.

1. John, Greg, could you tell us more about your transmedia project Reborn?

Reborn is a global high octane, character driven interactive narrative series targeted at VOD, mobile and TV platforms. It is a multithreaded multilingual narrative that uses an innovative platform giving the viewer the power to choose their own story, if they wish to do so. If not, an algorithm will choose on their behalf and play the series in a linear format.

Just like the old ‘choose your own’ adventure novels, our concept will give the viewer the ability to make narrative decisions at certain main plot points. These decisions will lead the audience to several alternate endings or plot points throughout an episode thus making each viewing unique, within the set amount of variations.

2. What was the input of Digital Lab Africa in the development of your project?

The DLA incubation has helped us nurture our project over the past few months by helping us on multiple levels, and firstly by giving us the opportunity of a residency in France where we were able to connect in person with leaders and proven industry professionals in the transmedia and broadcasting field.

We were able to discuss and brainstorm both the narrative and technological aspects of our project with various parties such as Okio-studio, ARTE, Canal+, La Générale de Production, the French National Center for Cinema (CNC). We were even included as a special project to pitch at Le Lab’O, Pôle Media Grand Paris’ incubator dedicated to multimedia projects.

In France Digital Lab Africa arranged for us to have a working space at La Nurserie, Audiens’ group incubator supporting innovative projects within the Cultural and Creative Industries. We also had sessions with our incubation mentors ARTE TV channel Head of Digital Development Gilles Freissinier, and Fondivina Films producer Marc Guidoni.

DLA assistance, arranging of logistics and linking us to effective industry players has been crucial in taking our project to the next phase.

3. What did the residency in France brought to the project? What are the next steps?

During our residency, the project has developed further. On the tech side, we have developed a first demo of the platform, our goal being for its final version to be seamless interaction for the viewer, as the content must never be interrupted at any point. On the narrative side, we had an overwhelmingly positive response on the strength and relevance of our story, and have decided to find a French writing partner for our French character Marie. The project will also be a creative partnership between SA and France.

We have also acquired much interest in terms of project partners: Jérémy Pouilloux from La Générale de Production would like to be our French producing partner, while Lorenzo Benedetti from Okio-studio has expressed interest in developing possible VR elements of the series and assisting with tech development.

The Cannes Film Festival will be a good opportunity for us to follow up with these leads and try to meet with distributors such as Black Pills and Netflix, as the next steps will be to find a distribution partner and secure financing.